Brain-Eating Amoeba? Yet Another Reason to Fish Cold Water…

Sure, flesh-eating bacteria remains foremost on our minds as the nation’s most-dangerous single-celled terrorist organism, but it turns out we had it wrong; for fishermen, killer, brain-eating amoeba are the real threat:

PHOENIX (AP) It sounds like science fiction but it’s true: A killer amoeba living in lakes enters the body through the nose and attacks the brain where it feeds until you die. Even though encounters with the microscopic bug are extraordinarily rare, it’s killed six boys and young men this year. The spike in cases has health officials concerned, and they are predicting more cases in the future.

It turns out these brain-eating amoeba like warmer waters, and thrive in places like warm, shallow lakes, hot springs — even swimming pools. Though cases of infection are rare (US cases are usually confined to Southern States), you’re going to love this next part:

Infection is almost always fatal:

Beach said people become infected when they wade through shallow water and stir up the bottom. If someone allows water to shoot up the nose ? say, by doing a somersault in chest-deep water ? the amoeba can latch onto the olfactory nerve.

The amoeba destroys tissue as it makes its way up into the brain, where it continues the damage, “basically feeding on the brain cells,” Beach said.

People who are infected tend to complain of a stiff neck, headaches and fevers. In the later stages, they’ll show signs of brain damage such as hallucinations and behavioral changes, he said.

Once infected, most people have little chance of survival. Some drugs have stopped the amoeba in lab experiments, but people who have been attacked rarely survive, Beach said.

“Usually, from initial exposure it’s fatal within two weeks,” he said.

Sure, you’re about a zillion times more likely to be hit by lightning while lying in your own bed than to be attacked by a brain-eating amoeba, but this is just the kind of story the broadcast media loves — involving as it does fear, uncertainty, and the ability to strike pretty much anyone, anywhere.

And hell, if it means good ratings for them, well… it means good ratings for the Underground! That’s why we’re jumping on the fear bandwagon early.

Remember, you were frightened here first.

For the record, we at the Underground advise fly fishers not to somersault in the shallow water of warm lakes.

You’re welcome.

You can read the rest of this frightening new development in terrorist cells here: The Associated Press: 6 Die From Brain-Eating Amoeba in Lakes, or visit the Center for Disease Control’s page on the disease.

[tags]fly fishing, brain eating amoeba[/tags]